five stages
by CS Fitzgerald
Summary: There are fives stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance; Gregory House can't cope with any of them.


**i. denial**

On your first day back, you feel fine.

It's just another day in the office. Paperwork to avoid, patients to avoid even more, and work colleagues to avoid the most. You're fine, really. Everything is fine – everything is absolutely peachy.

It's those around you that are making this into something else, something more than what it is. They all keep on hovering over you, carefully watching you, their eyes filled with pity as they try to comfort you. You just shrug them off. Tell them you're fine, and you don't need another one of their disbelieving, worried looks or barely concealed sighs as you tell them exactly that. Because it's the truth.

Wilson doesn't believe you, though. He keeps on telling you that have to let it go, that it's going to drive you insane, that you can't diagnose a suicide, that there are some things in life that even the great Gregory House can't figure out.

But he's wrong. And you're fine, you remind yourself, as you rub your tired, sleepy eyes. And the nightmares will stop and you'll be fine once you get your answer.

**ii. anger**

You go to a bar that same night and start drinking, not having to pay for a single one. After staring aimlessly at the amber liquid swirling around in your glass for what feels like hours, you finally tell the bartender that you're done with shots; you want the whole bottle instead.

He doesn't say anything as he hands you his strongest whiskey. You nod your thanks and leave quietly.

Sitting in the back alley now, the bottle is at your lips as you gulp from it desperately. You feel a small twinge of reprieve that lasts all of three and a half seconds before you're sober again. You let out a shout of rage and agony as you slam the bottle against the brick wall and collapse to your knees. You pointedly ignore an unfamiliar woman's strange glare at the mouth of the alley and continue screaming, not even caring as the glass cuts you, leaving new scars that'll only be unpleasant reminders of your pain tomorrow morning.

And it's not like you've never lost your temper before, but this time, you really lose it.

You keep on remembering the pictures of him you'd secretly taken from his apartment, pictures where he's graduating from medical school or standing on a tropical beach with his friends, his easy smile frozen in time. You keep on imagining his deceivingly happy face staring back at you, taunting you, and you find yourself so furious that you're shaking.

If only you'd _known_. If only you'd seen the signs. If only known that he was just like you, you could've told him, _don't be like me_. Then, maybe, he wouldn't be dead. Then, maybe, he'd still be alive. Then, maybe, there wouldn't be an empty desk at work, waiting for someone to fill it.

**iii. bargaining **

It's almost been a week.

One week, and everything's back to normal. Your team is already back to solving cases, back to scribbling differentials on the whiteboard. But then one of your latest patients dies. It's nobody's fault, really – she hadn't disclosed an allergy to a powerful medication and had gone into acute anaphylaxis. Seized ten minutes after going into the MRI. There was nothing anyone could've done to save her.

But you're convinced that you're either losing your touch or the fellows are slipping. Eventually, you decide it must be them, because you're as good as ever, jumping from one case to the next, saving lives that seem lost and never stopping long enough to think. Maybe that's the problem, though. Maybe you're not giving them enough time to keep up. But you can't stop. Because when you stop, everything else, your demons, the nightmares, catches up with you.

_All I have to do is just solve this first, find the answers, understand the un-understandable,_ you tell yourself, as you pour over his photos for the millionth time. You know them so well now that you can recall every small, seemingly insignificant detail, from the crookedness of someone's smile to the wrinkles that marred their otherwise neat clothing. _If I solve this, then none of this will matter anymore. If I find the missing piece of the puzzle, everything will go back to normal._

And you would give anything for everything to go back the way it was.

**iv.** **depression**

You lie on the floor, too tired to move and unable to sleep. The concrete beneath you is hard and cold, tying you to the physical as your mind wanders.

You've sunk this low before, right to the very depth where Wilson had found you sprawled on the bathroom floor in the middle of the day, covered in your own vomit, and with an empty vial of stolen oxycodone and vicodin lying scattered around your limp body.

You're sinking back down there, to that dark place, again. Faster, this time, and there's nothing you or anyone else can do about it. You actually find there's a strange pleasure in finally giving up, in letting yourself sink. In drowning. In allowing yourself to be swallowed, be consumed by something other than your own life.

Ultimately, even though you try to convince yourself it's different from what he did, it's still a kind of suicide – whether you're being consumed by love, lust, ideals, or even hope, you are consciously choosing to ignore what you are in favor of something else.

Never realizing that someday, when you try and swim to the surface, there might not be a surface to swim to anymore.

**v. acceptance **

There was no explanation.

_Except it should've been you._


End file.
